Muga Miyahara Hiromi The Trio Project Featuring Hiromi Anthony Jackson Simon Phillips PROGRAM There will be an intermission. Friday, April 1 @ 8 PM Zellerbach Theatre Media Sponsor: 15/16 Season 35 PROGRAM NOTES The songs performed will be mainly from Hiromi's new release Spark and the titles will be announced from the stage. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Hiromi (Composer, piano) Japan has produced an impressive assemblage of jazz pianists, from Toshiko Akiyoshi and Makoto Ozone to Junko Onishi. And now, well into the change of the 21st century, the pianist/composer Hiromi Uehara is the latest in that line of amazing musicians. Ever since the 2003 release of her debut Telarc CD, Another Mind, Hiromi has electrified audiences and critics around the world, with a creative energy that encompasses and eclipses the boundaries of jazz, classical and pop parameters, taking improvisation and composition to new heights of complexity and sophistication. Her CD, Alive, her ninth as a leader, features her critically-acclaimed Trio Project, consisting of contrabass guitarist Anthony Jackson (Steely Dan, Paul Simon, Michel Camilo, The O’Jays and Chick Corea) and drummer Simon Phillips (Toto, The Who, Judas Priest, David Gilmour and Jack Bruce). Born in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan on March 26, 1979, Hiromi’s piano lessons started when she was six. At this age, she also performed her first recital, enrolled in the Yamaha School of Music and started to write music. Hiromi moved to the United States in 1999 and she matriculated at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Among her mentors at Berklee was the veteran jazz bassist/arranger Richard Evans, who teaches arranging and orchestration. It was Evans who took Hiromi’s demo tape to his friend and collaborator, the legendary pianist/bandleader Ahmad Jamal. Evans co-produced her debut CD, Another Mind, with Jamal. Another Mind was a critical success in North America and in her native Japan, where the album shipped gold (100,000 units) and received the Recording Industry Association of Japan’s (RIAJ) Jazz Album of the Year Award. Hiromi’s astonishing debut was but a forecast of the shape of jazz to come. Her second release, Brain, won the Horizon Award at the 2004 Surround Music Awards, Swing Journal’s New Star Award, Jazz Life’s Gold Album, HMV Japan’s Best Japanese Jazz Album and the Japan Music Pen Club’s Japanese Artist Award (the JMPC is a classical/jazz journalists club). Brain was also named Album of the Year in Swing Journal’s 2005 Readers Poll. In 2006, Hiromi won Best Jazz Act at the Boston Music Awards and the Guinness Jazz Festival’s Rising Star Award. She also claimed Jazzman of the Year, Pianist of the Year and Album of the Year in Swing Journal’s Readers Poll for her 2006 release, Spiral. Hiromi’s winning streak continued with the release of Time Control in 2007 and Beyond Standard in 2008. Both releases featured Sonicbloom: her hand-picked group that included guitarist Dave “Fuze” Fiuczynski, bassist Tony Grey and drummer Martin Valihora. Hiromi achieved a number of milestones in 2009. She recorded with pianist Chick Corea, who she met in Japan when she was seventeen, on Duet, a two-disc live recording of their transcendent, transgenerational and transcultural duo concert in Tokyo. She also appeared on bassist Stanley Clarke’s Heads Up International release, Jazz in the Garden, which also featured former Chick Corea bandmate, drummer Lenny White. In June of that same year, Hiromi simultaneously released two concert DVDs, both recorded in Tokyo: Hiromi Live in Concert (recorded in December 2005) and Hiromi’s Sonicbloom Live in Concert (recorded in December 2007). The former features the rhythm section of Grey and Valihora, while the latter includes Fiuczynski’s incendiary fretwork. In 2010, Hiromi released A Place to Be, an impressive and intimate solo piano CD; her evocative aural travelogue of the many places and spaces she visited around the world. 36 ANNENBERG CENTER LIVE She followed up A Place to Be with a DVD, Hiromi Solo Live at Blue Note New York. Recorded on August 20 and 21 of 2010 at the Blue Note in New York City, the video includes 11 originals and a special bonus feature with interview clips and performance footage from some of Hiromi’s favorite cities around the world. On her 2011 album, Voice, Hiromi’s goal was to capture people’s “inner voices” to create what she called a “three-dimensional sound.” On that album, she assembled a trio that included herself and two veteran players: contrabass guitarist Anthony Jackson and drummer Simon Phillips. While Hiromi had played with Jackson prior to recording Voice, she had never recorded an entire album with either him or Phillips, the latter who had been recommended to her by legendary bassist Stanley Clarke, a mutual acquaintance. Also in 2011, The Stanley Clarke Band CD featuring Hiromi won the Grammy® Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. While on the road, Hiromi started writing music for the follow-up CD, Move, released in 2013. Move, like Voice, had an overriding theme, which Hiromi describes as “time in one day.” That same year, she had several impressive placements in DownBeat magazine’s 61st Annual International Critics Poll, in the Jazz Artist, Piano, Keyboard and Rising Star: Piano categories. Also, in 2013, she performed at George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival and performed there for the festival’s sixtieth anniversary in 2014. Simon Phillips (Drummer) Simon Phillips is by far one of the world's most renowned and respected drummers, whose style not only reflects his technical gift but also his distinct musical sensibility. Whether it is rock, fusion or jazz, Phillips applies the same precision and intensity to his drumming, which is never lacking in emotion and feel. Phillips’ professional musical career began at the early age of 12, performing and recording with his father's (Sid Phillips) Dixiel and band until he turned 16. With an offer to play in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, his path was marked and his career was in full bloom. Phillips soon became one of London's most celebrated session drummers. To date, he has toured and recorded with many bands and artists, including Mick Jagger, The Who, Jeff Beck, Jack Bruce, Peter Gabriel, Joe Satriani, Tears for Fears, Judas Priest, Roxy Music, Michael Schenker, Nik Kershaw, Phd., Al DiMeola, 801, Pete Townshend, Russ Ballard, Robert Palmer, Stanley Clarke, The Pretenders, Jon Anderson, Whitesnake and Dave Gilmour. In 1992, Phillips decided to move to the USA, coinciding with being asked to join Toto for their world tour. He has remained a full time member ever since. After recording the Toto album "Tambu" in 1995, another year of touring followed in 1996, covering Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and South America. In 1997, Phillips took a break from Toto in order to reach a personal milestone – he took his own band on tour, and for the first time he was the bandleader, and it was his music. This great year included tours of Europe, Japan and the United States, and a performance at The North Sea Jazz Festival. 1998 saw the recording of another Toto studio album entitled Mindfields, followed by two years of touring around the world, captured in the live CD Livefields. In 2002-03, Toto recorded Through the Looking Glass, and made extensive concert trips to Europe and Asia. Expanding his career from drumming to writing solo projects, Phillips recorded his first album Protocol in 1988, followed by Force Majeure in 1992. Symbiosis, which he recorded in 1995, was as spirited but more inspired than ever, and showed a change of direction in the compositions. Phillips likes to link his growth in songwriting and new artistic depth to his move to the States. The 1997 record Another Lifetime shows yet another layer of his tremendously resourceful playing and more motivated composing. Out of the Blue, a live album, followed in 1998 and in 1999, another complete change of style took place in Vantage Point, which is a straight jazz album. 15/16 Season 37 Yet another expansion to Phillips’ musical career is producing and engineering, which he first started back in England with British composer Mike Oldfield, working on three albums with him. Aside from his solo projects, Phillips also co-produced Toto's Tambu in 1995, followed by Mindfields in 1998. Phillips was asked to engineer the latest Toto album, and spent a couple of months during the winter of 2001-02 recording Through the Looking Glass. Phillips is currently back in his studio mixing a recently recorded show for the next Toto DVD. In 2000, Phillips took a break from Toto and recorded with Derek Sherinian, formally of Dream Theater, as well as produced and engineered Inertia. The following year included Moonbabies, the recording of progressive band Planet X, and mixing a live CD, Live From Oz. Anthony Jackson (Bassist) For over 40, years Anthony Jackson has been the bassist’s bassist: the man most admired by his peers and music fans alike for his groundbreaking groove work in jazz and pop with the likes of Billy Paul, the O’Jays, Buddy Rich, Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Chick Corea, Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, Paul Simon, Al DiMeola, Quincy Jones, Steve Khan’s Eyewitness, Luther Vandross, George Benson, Lee Ritenour, Michel Petrucciani, Pat Metheny, Michel Camilo, Mike Stern, Wayne Krantz and Hiromi. Jackson was born June 23, 1952 in New York City and after trying piano and guitar, he found his way to the bass guitar as a teen, inspired by Motown master James Jamerson. He added the key influences of Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady and French modernist composer Olivier Messiaen.